First, let’s get to the exciting stuff! I’m happy to report that I’m still ahead of the game when it comes to NaNoWriMo with Gardens of Equestria: Dances of Light and Shadow. I cracked the 20,000 word mark yesterday finishing Chapter 4, Wild Magic. And no, I’m not telling you what the chapter’s about. Theorize all you want though. 🙂

Littlepip being Adorable by Commander Sparkle

I hope you all are thoroughly enjoying Fallout 4. I’ve seen the headlines of various reviews and they look to be utterly spectacular. I’m really looking forward to getting into it, though as I said before, I get to wait a month to do it. It’s probably for the best. Between the work still remaining on This Coming Storm & NaNoWriMo, plus the insanely busy month this will be for me, adding Fallout 4 to the mix would just make things so very much harder.

Still, I’m totally jealous of all of you playing right now.

In case you missed it, in celebration of Fallout 4’s launch, we released a work-in-progress version of the ambient score for Topaz Lake. I think Corvus once again nailed it perfectly. I’ve never had someone get my “creative vision” and run with it so well before. Then again, since I’m usually a novelist, I rarely need to work with others. Believe it or not, it’s kinda hard sometimes to get everyone on the same wavelength. But it’s something I don’t need to worry about with Corvus. He definitely gets the levels I’ve designed and pumps out music that fits not only the area, but the story as well. It’s a rare gift and one for which I am incredibly grateful.

I’m also happy to report that final level design has started again on GoE. With the utter chaos of the last few weeks, I’ve had to focus my attention elsewhere, but last night I nearly finished the lighting for the Rock Farm’s Sector 2: Administration, a unique level where players will get to discover just what happened at the Rock Farm when the megaspells began to rain from the sky.

Here’s a little secret too: much more of the history and legacy of the Rock Farm is revealed within Dances of Light and Shadow. As you know, the Rock Farm is central to GoE: This Coming Storm and Appleloosa Valley in particular. I’m very glad that I get to expand on the lore of the facility within this story as Littlepip and her companions delve into the depths of the secret Steelstone Security Facility and beyond. In fact, you’ll actually get to see some of the areas featured in Dances of Light and Shadow within This Coming Storm.

But what I’m most looking forward to is the next level. Sector 3 is the central hub of the Rock Farm’s research and development facilities. While satellite facilities existed in the Western Complex beyond Topaz Lake (and below Topaz Lake as well), all military research was conducted in this massive lab. Dominated by an immense MAS-designed power core, this vertically-designed level will feature many of the weapons and armor unique to GoE including those we’ve featured in Smuggler’s Run. Trust me, this place will blow your mind as to the sheer scale. It’s one of the areas that we’ve kept the screenshots under wraps for the most part, having only small tight-view pictures so you can walk into this place and get the full power of the combined efforts of the MAS and MWT.

As for Smuggler’s Run, we’re planning on a massive update to Smuggler’s Run at the launch of GoE (and a minor update with several bugfixes in early December). Smuggler’s Run will actually be an integral part of GoE: This Coming Storm and we plan to set up an installer to make sure you have the current version. I should note that the This Coming Storm version of Smuggler’s Run will likely remove most or all weapons available in the preview mod and place them in their appropriate locations within the Rock Farm. We haven’t decided for sure yet, but we want these weapons to be completely unique.

That’s all for us today, save for the mandatory and promised update to the YouTube version of the Fallout: Equestria (The Manehattan Edition) audiobook.

Please note that we probably won’t have updates for the next two weeks. I personally have a special training I’m attending and of course the week after is Thanksgiving Weekend (I think). But we’ll update for the last week of November. I’ll also be redoing some of the music slides. For some reason, YouTube has made all the preview images super-grainy and I don’t know why. I’ll figure it out though. And I need to keep you appraised as to what’s going on with NaNoWriMo!